


a story about groceries

by a_good_soldier



Series: s13 codas [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cage Trauma, Consent Issues, Episode: s13e13 Devil's Bargain, Food Issues, Gen, M/M, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Season/Series 13, Support, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 22:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: “Hey,” Dean says, when Sam doesn’t reply for a while, “Earth to Sam.”Sam chokes out a laugh. He drinks some more water. He says, “I am— Dean, I am really, really not—” he swallows down another spoonful of eggs, and says through his full mouth, “—functional. I’m not functional, right now.”Or, alternatively: wherein Dean copes with Sam coping with Lucifer's return.





	a story about groceries

**Author's Note:**

> warnings in the tags! also, warning for vomiting (largely offscreen but still featured prominently) and creepy stuff? i'm not very good at writing the horror so i don't think it comes across as that creepy, but if you like to avoid any vaguely creepy stuff just be warned that feelings of inexplicable, potentially supernatural unease are in this fic.
> 
> i wanted to get this out before today's ep but i just didn't have time, so this is probably already canon divergent. also uhhh i'm not sure what else you need to know but if you have qs or just wanna talk about spn, hmu @agoodsoldier on tumblr anytime pals <3
> 
> full disclosure: i might come back and edit this later bc its 1:30am rip

i. feeding sam

Dean doesn’t remember much about his life before Mom’s death. He was a kid; he ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; sometimes Mom cried on the phone when Dad left for more’n a day.

Today, Sam hasn’t eaten. Dean imagines it’s because— well, he doesn’t have to imagine. Not when Alistair’s always quiet in the back of his mind, ready to jump out at any opportunity. And Alistair had plenty of opportunity when Dean had the Mark. But that’s besides the point.

“Momma,” Dean used to say, “momma, I’m hungry.” And Mom would feed him, give him good hearty food for her growing boy, she used to say. Good and hearty non-perishables.

Before they went to Heaven — the first time, Dean figures he ought to specify — the first thing, the very first thing Dean remembered was Mom breastfeeding Sam in a chair in their living room. “What’re you doing with Sammy?” he’d asked.

“He’s hungry,” Mom had said. She had this smile on her face, a smile Dean’s never seen since. He remembers feeling radiant just looking at her. This was one of the days when Dad wasn’t home, but it was okay. Mom said it was okay. “Sam’s gotta drink what Momma has for him, that’s how he’s gonna grow up big and strong like his big brother Dean.”

“Oh,” Dean said, stupidly. Looking back as an adult, Dean usually ends up concluding that he was a stupid kid.

Of course, the Heaven memory with the peanut butter jelly sandwiches and Mom on the phone with Dad and Dean getting up to hug her in his I Wuv Hugs t-shirt supplanted that first memory, because after all, it took place before Sam was born. Dean’s still not sure if he resents the angels for that. It had always felt right that his first memory should be of Sam being fed. Mom being happy.

“Sam,” Dean says now, worriedly, “Sammy, you hungry?” He sets a bowl down in front of Sam, who’s sitting at the table with his head on his forearms. “Made you some stew.”

Good and hearty, ready for a growing boy. Sometimes feels like they’re still kids, waiting for Dad to come home. ‘Course, Dad hasn’t been home in ten years, and sometimes, when he’s feeling real uncharitable, Dean is grateful for it.

“Hnn,” Sam grunts, rolling his forehead against his arms for a moment like that’ll fix the headache Dean knows is plaguing him. Been like this since the news came about Lucifer being back; it’s like pulling teeth trying to get him to eat. Yesterday Sam spent a full twenty minutes sitting at their little kitchen nook, looking at a slice of toast poking out of the top of the toaster before Dean noticed and took it out, put it on a plate for him.

“Okay,” Dean says, and puts the bowl in front of him. “It’s here if you want it.” He leaves it in front of Sam, within arm’s reach, and goes to the library before he screams.

 

ii. detour to lawrence

Dean avoided Lawrence like the plague growing up. At first, it was because Dad did it; can’t go somewhere if the man driving the car says it’s not allowed. Then the memory of the fire eventually consumed the rest of it, and Dean never wanted to set foot in the place. Never wanted to come near it.

Then they met up with Missouri and exorcised a poltergeist and saw their mom as a ghost, and it broke the seal for Dean. He never sought it out, but he thought— he thought, if I have to go to Lawrence, it won’t be the end of the world.

Dean’s out for groceries. They have enough canned goods to last them through two nuclear winters, but even Dean can admit that sometimes a man needs his greens. The closest superstore is closed; the next one, closed too. Dean finds his phone and realizes it’s not even seven in the goddamn morning. His internal clock is fucked from living in a basement for years, and it’s light enough outside that he didn’t even think to check the time.

He keeps on highway 24 for about another hour until he realizes he’s being ridiculous. He ought to turn back, wait in some decent town until the sun’s high enough in the sky for Walmart to deign to open its doors. But he keeps going, ten miles over the speed limit and not a car in sight, and before he knows it there’s the turnoff if he wants it.

He’s not sure if he wants it. He doesn’t stop the car, though, so he must want it. He turns off the I-70 onto McDonald Drive, and there he is. Dean Winchester’s in Lawrence.

He finds a parking lot and steps out. He’s gotta piss, suddenly, and there’s a 7-11 just down the street, so he walks on the grass next to the roadside. No sidewalks here; guess no one walks around these parts, just off the interstate where men like Dean step out of their cars for some fresh air.

Predictably, the 7-11 doesn’t have a restroom, but the Subway just down the road does, so Dean moseys on over, bowlegs getting more and more pronounced as his bladder gets fuller. He’s really gotta go, and he’s debating risking a public indecency charge before finally the Subway comes into view. He braves the small town stink eye and uses the bathroom without buying anything, and then makes the ten minute trek back to Baby.

There’s probably a grocery store around here. There must be, if people live here; so, Dean hops back in his car and looks up the nearest superstore. Last time he was here he would’ve had to talk to the kid at the 7-11 or the disgruntled Filipino lady at the Subway, but now it’s 2018 and human interaction is entirely avoidable, unless you wanna take a piss indoors.

He drives down to the closer Dillons and loads up on some bread, kale for the Sasquatch, eggplant for his veggie stir fry tonight. It’s already eleven AM, so he figures he oughtta hightail it back to Lebanon, when a local newspaper catches his eye.

FIRE AT— reads the part of the headline he can read, and his heart stops. Dean drops his basket to take a closer look: FIRE AT LOCAL RESTAURANT, 2 INJURED. No casualties, he realizes. It’s a restaurant. There are ovens there, and sometimes they catch fire. Dean picks up his basket. Upon inspection, the eggs have survived the trauma.

Dean makes his purchases and starts to leave, when the back of his neck starts to prickle. He looks around furtively; no one seems to be watching him. He walks faster. He makes it to his car, dumps the groceries in the trunk, and gets out of the parking lot as fast as he can, heart racing. He doesn’t turn on any music; he’s too busy checking his rear view mirror as often as he can get away with.

There’s nothing following him. He knows that, or he thinks he knows that, or he’s trying to convince himself he knows that so he can avoid thinking about what could be following him that he can’t see—

His breathing starts to come faster, and he realizes he’s been driving around with no direction. He needs gas if he wants to make the trip home in one go.

He turns a corner, and there’s his old house.

How did this happen? he thinks, scrambling to turn out of this suburban annex. The house looks fine, from what he sees of it out of the corner of his eye. Someone’s refurbished it, or torn the whole thing down to its foundations and started over. It’s been years since he was last here.

He sees a sign for the highway eventually and steps on the gas. He’ll load up the tank at a gas station on the way. He can’t shake the fear, the watching eyes, until he’s put the city limits a good fifty miles behind him. He fills up at a nowhere gas station on the interstate, and the wide open landscape that always felt like home to him just reminds him he has nowhere to hide.

 

iii. cooking, cleaning, and women’s work

While Dean was in Lawrence, he bought Lysol wipes.

Dean’s a fan of any kind of industrial cleaning wipe. You wouldn’t know it to look at him — Christ, he hopes you wouldn’t know it to look at him — but he loves being clean. He loves cleaning things, he loves making sure the places he stays are hygienic and safe.

Dad was never into the whole cleaning thing. Dean figures it was a combination of his time in the war — you don’t get time to clean yourself when you’re laying mines in Vietnam — and the time they spent in motels when Dean and Sam were growing up. If you can’t afford food you can’t afford wet wipes; that’s just basic math.

Dean never realized what he wanted — never realized it was good to have a clean living space, never realized how important it was to him that surfaces were scrubbed free of dirt — until the first time he scrubbed himself raw. Seventeen years old, and half giddy with excitement from the new roll of twenties in his back pocket, half nauseated with what he had to do to get them. Instinct told him to scrub until he couldn’t scrub anymore, and it was like God himself was speaking through the soap on his thighs. When he took an art class in his junior year, just before he dropped out, he showed up to class with the first page of Revelations ripped out of a motel bible and a Dial soap label glued to the middle of the page. He couldn’t say why he did it, though. Ended up with a C in the class. Figures.

Sam stumbles out of his room around four in the afternoon. Dean’s got breakfast on a plate staying warm in the oven, although by this point it’s probably cold anyway. “Food’s in the oven,” Dean says, but Sam doesn’t seem to hear him.

“Hey,” Dean says again, following Sam into the kitchen, “I said food’s in the oven.”

“‘Kay.” Sam sits down at the kitchen table and scrubs a hand over his face. His hair lays flat against his head, and he definitely hasn’t shaved in a few days.

Dean leans against the door. Finally, when he can’t take it anymore, he says, “You gonna get your food?”

“Yeah, ‘m gonna.” Sam sits there, though, hair over his eyes. Christ. Dean walks over to the oven and pulls out the food, setting it on the table in front of Sam. “Oh,” Sam says. “Thanks. Was gonna get that.”

Dean’s mouth twists. “I know, Sammy.” He sits down and watches as Sam takes a full three minutes to pull the tin foil off the plate.

Then Sam just watches it, and Dean says, “Ah, shit. I’ll get cutlery.” He goes up to get a fork and knife, and comes back to see Sam standing up. “Hey, buddy, where are you off to?”

“I—” Sam blinks, and his eyes go clear for a moment. “I was gonna get a fork.”

“I got one for ya.” Sam sits down, eyes still on Dean, and Dean puts the fork and knife in front of him. “I got you cutlery.”

“Thanks,” Sam mumbles, eyes glazing over again. He looks back down at his plate. He eats a bite of toast, a spoonful of eggs, half a sausage. Then he slows down, struggling to get through a bite of bacon.

“It’s cold,” Dean notes self-deprecatingly. Damn. If he’d gotten Sam outta bed earlier, maybe the food would’ve been more appetizing. He’s gotta eat. Dean offers, “I can make you something else.”

“No,” Sam says softly, “no, I’m just— I’m full.”

Dean looks at him, taller than his older brother and asleep for the past twenty hours. Last time Dean saw him eat was dinner two days ago. “You’re not full,” Dean says. “You haven’t eaten.”

“I had some cereal yesterday,” Sam says defensively. “I’m not a fucking— I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not— Jesus Christ, Sam.” Dean swallows it down. He watches as Sam forces another bite of toast into himself. He coughs a little. Dean says, meanly, “You want some water?”

Sam glares at him. “I can get myself some damn water.” He gets up, and goes to the cupboard. Dean watches as he looks at the glasses.

A minute. A minute and a half. Two minutes. Finally, Dean says, “You gonna get a cup or just look at ‘em?”

Sam’s hand is shaking against the door of the cabinet. He says, “I can’t remember what I’m here for.”

The bottom drops out of Dean’s chest. Worry overriding any sense of frustration, he says, “You—you were gonna get some water. It’s okay. Sit. Siddown,” he repeats, when Sam stays standing.

Sam shuffles over to the table and sits down in the seat closer to him, across from where he was sitting before. He reaches over and pulls the plate closer to him, then the fork, then the knife. Dean puts the cup down next to him. “Talk to me,” Dean says, “tell me what’s wrong.”

Sam drinks some water, and Dean slides into the chair across the table.

“Hey,” Dean says, when Sam doesn’t reply for a while, “Earth to Sam.”

Sam chokes out a laugh. He drinks some more water. He says, “I am— Dean, I am really, really not—” he swallows down another spoonful of eggs, and says through his full mouth, “—functional. I’m not functional, right now.”

And the first thing Dean thinks — the first goddamn thing Dean thinks, that bullshit instinct kicking in that he’s never been able to shake — is, _We don’t have time for that_. He can’t seem to stop himself from running through his own losses of self, his own time spent getting his calories from booze and not much else, and the fact that he pushed through those times. That he made something of himself, that when he got knocked down and then spit on, he still made the sacrifice play instead of sitting at a goddamn kitchen table waiting for his brother to bring him a goddamn fork.

He hates himself for that. He really does.

After that’s passed, he asks, “What do you need?”

Sam drinks some more water. “Dunno,” he says, “just— there’s not enough time.” And before Dean can ask what the hell that means, Sam leaves his plate and his fork and his unused knife and his cup on the table, and ambles over to the bathroom. Dean looks out into the hallway and hears the lock turn. Sam doesn’t come out, so after five minutes have passed, Dean gets started on the dishes. It’s always good to keep things clean, if you can manage it. Even if it’s the only thing you can manage.

 

iv. cruising (feeding sam pt. 2)

At two in the morning, Sam stumbles out of his room. Dean’s still up, working on some research with Cas because they hadn’t gotten around to closing the books up, despite Dean’s incessant yawns.

“Oh,” Sam chokes out, “you’re— I’m—”

“What?” Dean snaps, blinking the spellwork out of his eyes. He doesn’t have the head for translation like Sam does, but visual patterns he’s got down, easy. Cas has been giving him sigils to compare for the past hour and it feels like he’s been looking at the same goddamn star for ten years.

Sam stumbles a little, and sits down at the table with them. “Nothing, never mind.” He looks over at Cas. “Need some help?”

Cas frowns, and instead of saying anything relevant to the question, remarks, “You seem… unfed.” He looks over at Dean, maybe for confirmation.

That hurts. It’s two in the morning and Dean knows, he _knows_ Cas isn’t saying it to get on his nerves, probably isn’t saying it to him at all, but he spits out, “Not my fucking fault he won’t _eat_ ,” and storms out, eyes stinging. Jesus. He’s always like this, always lashing out because he’s a goddamn menace is what he is, can’t even shut his damn mouth when it counts. Least no civilians are around for him to kill, and no Mark to make him take on his local celestial being.

He gets to his room and sits down, looks at the picture of Mom that’s still on his desk. Sometimes he tells that picture things, things he never worked up the courage to say to his mom in person. Not even when she came back and her alive-ness was new and terrifying and uncertain, and he thought he might have to say everything as fast as he could get it out before they lost her again. Which they did, of course. And there’s still things left unsaid.

One of those things is this. When Sam was thirteen, Dean faced a dilemma which was, in short, as follows: they didn’t have enough food, and Sam was catching on to the fact that Dean wasn’t eating, and Sam was not happy about it.

So Dean, rather than hide his rationing from Sam or beg Dad for more money, found a nice old man named John (and wasn’t that a kick in the teeth) at a local dive where there was no bouncer to card him, and Dean’s boyish charm and talented mouth had earned him some of that nice old man’s crumpled twenty dollar bills (with a ten dollar tip), which then paid for Dean and Sam’s food for the whole next week.

The thing with boys — and Dean learned this from Ben when he lived with Lisa, too, even if that only lasted a year and a half, and was broken in other ways besides — is that they grow, and they get hungrier. What once paid for a week of food only got five days, and two years after that, Sam and Dean together could burn through fifty bucks of food in just two days, easy. It made food a point of pride for Dean. A way to claim that they weren’t as poor as they were, a way to show Dad that he could take care of Sam without begging, without needing help from his old man. By that point Dean was an adult, so his nighttime earnings could be restricted to weekends, while his day job paid for most of Sam’s needs.

That was one of the things he never told Mom. How precarious their food situation was, growing up. And who the hell knows, it could’ve been just as precarious when they were babies, and Dad was out drinking away his money and his war trauma every night while Mom was serving up canned peas because the fresh ones were a few cents beyond the budget. Sometimes Dean keeps things quiet so he doesn’t have to recognize them in the people he loves.

There’s a knock at the door. “Dean,” Cas says from behind it. Nothing else. Sometimes Cas drops his name like it’s an anchor, like there’s nothing else necessary to keep his ship steady.

Dean sighs and says, “Come in.”

Cas walks in to see— Dean doesn’t know what he sees. He doesn’t know enough about how Cas sees the world, what Cas sees when he looks at Dean. Dean, with a history of demons and vampires under his skin, unclean from the start for all that it was Sam with the demon blood. Dean’s got not much left to say for himself after thirty-nine years on this earth and a record that can’t be wiped clean to show for it.

Cas says, “You upset Sam.” Figures. Sam’s been lying around— Dean suppresses the thought.

“Don’t talk to me about how he eats,” Dean says. “That’s— that’s all I’m gonna say. Don’t talk to me about what Sam eats. Anything else is fine.”

Cas sits down on the bed next to him. Dean’s in a pair of sweatpants and a Henley, which makes it all the weirder that Cas is still in his trenchcoat. Just ridiculous.

After a while, Cas says, “I’m… sorry.”

“Huh,” Dean grunts instantly, involuntarily. He pauses. “I, uh, I mean— thanks?”

Cas doesn’t reply, and they sit there for a moment. He says, “Sam says you don’t need to worry about his eating habits.”

“Sam can tell me that himself,” Dean says, instead of what he wants to say, which is that it’s hard to turn off thirty-five years of instinct, even if there was a four decade torture interruption.

“All right.” Then Cas gets up, and he says, “Good night, Dean.”

“Wait.” Dean sighs. “Is he— is he okay?”

Cas’s mouth crooks up. “Sam can tell you that himself.”

Dean huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, damn it. Walked right into that one.” Cas doesn’t make any further move to leave, though, and Dean gears himself up to say it. After a moment, he bites the bullet. “You wanna stay?”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Cas says, but not unkindly. He closes the door and takes off his trenchcoat, and then his suit jacket and his pants. Cas never seems to realize how ridiculous he looks in just a white dress shirt, and Dean’s not going to complain about it.

Cas settles into the bed next to him, and Dean says, “But really, is he okay?” He can’t shut it off — thirty-five years don’t erase themselves, no matter how much you might want them to.

Cas sighs. “He’s Sam. He’ll pull through.” He doesn’t say much else, and Dean rolls that around in his mind for a bit.

Sam has always pulled through. But sometimes — and Dean thinks about Gadreel, about the Darkness, about Sam’s closed eyes as he was laid out on a table while a monster threatened to cut his heart out and sell it to other monsters after the live show — Dean wonders whether Sam really wants to pull through at all. He wonders what’s keeping him here, if it’s not Dean’s scintillating company.

Tomorrow he’ll make lunch. And he’ll sit down, and watch Sam eat it. Maybe then he’ll figure out how to help Sam out of his slump. Good food never hurt anybody.

 

v. good eatin’

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!” Dean calls, knocking on Sam’s door. It’s 11 am — still morning, technically, but late enough that Sam has to have gotten enough sleep. He doesn’t hear anything through the door, though, so he says again, “Hey, I made you breakfast.”

Finally, after Dean’s decided to sit against the hallway across from Sam’s door because his bad leg’s acting up and ten minutes standing still on his feet isn’t doing him any good, Sam opens the door.

“Food,” Dean says, pointing to the tray next to him.

Sam’s mouth curls up into a smile. “Thanks, man.” Dean’s feeling a little too cozy to want to stand up just yet, and Sam seems content enough to just sit on the floor next to him. “You bring any for yourself?”

“I already ate,” Dean says, and watches as Sam swallows uncomfortably, frowns. Dean rushes to add, “You don’t— you don’t have to finish it. I’ll eat the rest. I just, I didn’t bring two plates or nothing.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, it, uh, it looks good.” He picks up a fork and spears the pancake on the plate in front of him, and Dean tries to look like he’s not watching Sam’s every move.

Sam eats slowly and methodically. He first puts a perfect triangular slice of pancake into his mouth, washes it down with coffee, and then neatly cuts his sausage into four parts. He eats one quarter of a sausage, and then another bite of pancake. Dean swallows. He doesn’t remember Sam ever eating like this before, but any food’s good, he figures. Sam doesn’t look up, not once. Dean feels ill equipped to make any kind of one-sided conversation to fill the silence, so there’s no sound except for the echo of fork tines on the ceramic plate.

Eventually, Sam clears his plate. He says absentmindedly, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t— I didn’t save you any.”

“S’fine.” Dean watches Sam set his fork and knife down gently, next to the plate. “You want some more?” Sam looks stricken. Dean rears back. “I— you don’t have to—”

“No, it’s—” Sam shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’m pretty full.”

“Okay.”

Sam breathes out. Dean hears his stomach grumble. “You, uh— you sure?” He grins and raises an eyebrow at Sam’s stomach. “Sounds like that could use some more fuel.”

“No,” Sam says sharply. He sighs, and rubs a hand over his stomach, so quickly it seems involuntarily. “I mean. No thanks.”

Dean nods, unsure what to do with this. “Sure, yeah,” he says, avoiding the instinct that tells him Sam’s not happy, Sam’s still hungry. Sam’s mouth twists.

At the same time, Sam and Dean start, “I think—” “I’ll wash the dishes—”

Dean huffs out a laugh. “I’ll take the dishes. You need anything?”

Sam’s face is blank. “No,” he says, “I’m good.”

Dean frowns at him, but can’t find anything else to be worried about; so, he takes the tray down to the kitchen. Figuring Sam probably wanted a moment to himself, he scrapes the food off the dishes, and then, because he just took the dishes out of the dishwasher and he could use the distraction, he scrubs them by hand, satisfying in their cleanness as he dries them and puts them in the cabinets.

Afterwards, he heads back over to Sam’s room. If Sam’s busy that’s fine, but Dean figured they could go out, get some fresh air. He’s even willing to risk the farmer’s market with all the other organic hippies if that’ll get Sam out of his room.

He knocks on Sam’s door. Nothing.

He waits a moment, and doesn’t even hear anything from the room inside. He frowns. “Sam?”

There’s no response, and Dean gets more worried. “Hey, Sam, I’m gonna— I’m gonna come in, if you don’t tell me not to.” He forces himself to count to ten, and then again. He tries the knob; door’s unlocked.

There’s no one inside. There’s not even— where the _hell_ is Sam?

He looks around, and then — and he feels like an idiot — he realizes Sam could be in the bathroom. Could be taking a shower or something.

He heads over to the shared bathroom, because for all their fancy technology, the bunker’s a glorified dormitory. He hears something and breathes out a sigh of relief. He walks in, and that relief turns sour in his stomach. The sound is someone gagging.

“Sammy?” Dean walks in, and there’s a closed stall door, with Sam’s feet visible under it. Jesus Christ. “Hey, Sam.”

“Nguh—” he hears from behind the door, and then, raspy, “Wait, just a— sorry, Dean—” and then the vomiting starts again.

Geez. “Open the door, Sammy,” Dean says, transported back to childhood flus in motel rooms.

He hears the latch click, and then there’s Sam, bent over the toilet bowl. They’re too big for ‘em both to fit in right near the toilet, but Dean squats behind Sam and rubs his hand over his back. “Aw man, Sammy,” Dean murmurs, “that’s okay, get it out. What was it, you think?”

It’s idle curiosity, mostly just Dean trying to cover up the sound of Sam’s sick hitting the toilet bowl, but Sam says, “I just— I shouldn’t have eaten anything.”

“You sick?” It seems to mostly be over now, so Dean pulls out a whole swath of toilet paper and hands it over to Sam. “Coulda told me, I woulda made soup or something.”

“No, it’s—” Sam leans back on his ass to drop his head between his knees. He breathes in and out, slowly. Dean reaches over him to flush the toilet. After a few deep breaths, Sam continues. “I just, that’s, that’s why I haven’t been eating. Can’t keep much down.”

Dean frowns. “But you— you didn’t have to eat all that, just now, if—” 

“You’re always so worried about me eating,” Sam says quietly, still looking down, his back to Dean. “I thought— I thought if I could just, if I could—” There’s snot and tears running down Sam’s face now, and Dean’s not sure if that’s from the vomiting or something else. Quiet, so quiet Dean thinks he might’ve imagined it, Sam admits, “I wanted you to stop looking at me like a freak.”

Oh Jesus. “Sam—” Dean chokes out, feeling stupid and shitty and ashamed of himself.

They sit there in silence for a bit, until Dean starts to really feel the cold tile floor he’s sitting on. “Okay,” he says to the back of Sam’s head, “you’re going to bed, get up.”

Sam stumbles up and says, woozy, “We could— I could—”

“No, no no no,” Dean says, “you’ve made enough decisions for today, I’m takin’ care of you.”

It’s a lighthearted joke, one Dean doesn’t think much of, but Sam wrenches himself away. “Jesus, Dean—” he snaps, and then stalks out of the bathroom.

“Sam— _Sam_ ,” Dean calls after him. Shit.

He makes it to Sam’s door just as Sam slams it behind himself. “Sam, c’mon,” he says, not daring to try the doorknob. “What’d I say?”

There’s no sound from behind the door. “Jesus _Christ_ ,” Dean mutters. Fuckin’ Sam, having a goddamn fit and not even fucking telling Dean what the fuck is happening to his own goddamn brother— like he’s supposed to just pretend nothing’s happening and let Sam kill himself out of sheer negligence—

Deep breaths, in and out. You don’t have the Mark anymore, Dean.

Even if your stint as a demon felt more familiar than anything else since you came up out of Hell.

He can’t fix anything here, so he goes back to the bathroom. He just picked up a new supposedly lung-safer product that’s “Just as Tough!” as bleach on grout, and no better day than today to use it. He detours to the pantry — because they have a pantry, which is still exciting even after almost six years — to pick up a sponge and his pseudo-bleach.

When he opens up the lid, Dean fucking loses it. It’s just— the thing smells just as toxic and corrosive and bad for your respiratory health as any cleaning product. He accidentally takes big gulping breaths of the fumes in his laughter, and that’s just as absurd and fantastic as the whole damn rest of it. He starts at the stall where he found Sam puking his guts up, and pours until half the bottle’s gone.

Then he realizes he’s supposed to wait for two hours for the thing to soak in and then scrub it off, so he goes back to the kitchen and thinks about making more food that Sam won’t eat.

 

vi. return to lawrence

Sam finds Dean on his knees in the bathroom, which isn’t as worrying a sentence as it might’ve been twenty years ago.

“Where’s Cas?” he asks.

“Following a lead on Lucifer.”

Sam grimaces. “Geez, so soon? He only got back yesterday.”

Dean tries not to get his hackles up. He’s had two and a half hours to think about his actions, but he didn’t anticipate Cas getting brought up. “Yeah,” he says shortly.

Sam crouches next to him. Dean reluctantly gives up scrubbing the grout. It’s probably too late for grime that’s been caked into this place for literally half a century, although if Dean really thought that he probably wouldn’t have made it past two months out of Hell.

“So what was—” “Dean, I’m—”

Twice in one day. You can’t write this shit, Dean thinks.

Sam says, “You go first,” and so Dean does.

“What was that about?”

And then Sam has the gall to try to reply, “I don’t know—”

“Are you serious?” Dean drops his sponge. “Sam, buddy, I know you’re a martyr to put goddamn Jesus Christ himself to shame, but you gotta admit, this is concerning.”

Sam’s mouth twists, like he’s almost about to smile before he thinks better of it. “Yeah, I know.” He sits down properly, knees up and half covering his face because his legs are so damn long. “I dunno, it’s been— ever since Lucifer…”

When he doesn’t continue, Dean offers, “Yeah, I… I noticed that.”

“Yeah.” Sam continues, “I guess I just— I thought I was safe.” He huffs out half a laugh. “I really thought— I thought he’d—” Sam shakes his head. “I’m an idiot.”

Dean swallows. He says, “You’re safe. If anyone can kick the Devil’s ass, it’s you.”

“I know.” Sam flexes his hand. “I just— I don’t want to. I don’t wanna be— be— be so hyped up on adrenaline that I can’t eat, that I’m looking over my shoulder in my sleep, I can’t— I can’t be looking up anti-possession sigils every waking moment, Dean. I _just_ stopped doing that.” He looks up and makes eye contact with Dean, but doesn’t say anything.

Finally, Dean prods, as gently as he knows how. “What?”

Sam takes in a deep breath. He says, “That’s actually— that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. What made me freak out earlier.”

He doesn’t say anything else, though, so Dean asks, “What’d you wanna tell me?”

Sam looks at the floor. “I just— I— Dean, you can’t, you can’t say you’re gonna make decisions for me.” His voice dies and, like it hurts to say it, he says softly, “It’s all I got left, Dean. All I got left is saying no.”

Oh Jesus. “Oh Jesus, Sam,” Dean says, and he can’t keep whatever emotion he’s feeling out of his voice. He lets it out there half hoping Sam can put a name to it, because he sure can’t.

“Don’t pity me,” Sam says— pleads, more like.

“No, that’s—” wrong, he wants to say, that’s not what I felt, but Sam’s speaking before he can explain himself.

“Don’t pity me when you did this to me,” Sam whispers fiercely, “you and— Gadreel, and when you were a— what you did to me, Dean, I’m never gonna— I’m never gonna—” the breath falls out of him like there’s just not enough room in Sam’s caved in chest for it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bring it up.”

Dean’s fingers feel numb. He grapples nervelessly for the sponge and moves it to the bucket, hearing only the faintest echo of a splash. “Sam—” he tries, but his voice cracks, his throat too dry. All the moisture’s making its way up to his eyes. “Sam, I’m—”

“Never mind,” Sam says. “It’s not— it’s just what you said, it reminded me of the fact— it’s nothing. Compared to Lucifer, it’s nothing.”

Compared to decades in Hell being tortured by the Devil himself, it’s nothing. Compared to pain that made me hallucinate so bad I forgot what was real and what wasn’t, the thing you did to me was nothing.

Dean feels like _he’s_ gonna puke.

“And Toni,” Sam says, “and— hah, fuck, Becky, and Meg, and all of it, every single— it really isn’t the worst thing, Dean. You didn’t do this to me.” He laughs, sharp and dangerous. “All those times. Maybe I did it to myself.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Dean begs. “Sam, you didn’t— you just said, you didn’t—”

“Sure,” Sam acquiesces, but gently, like he’s saying it to a kid. He stands up and grins shakily. “Think we should help out Cas?”

“I—” Dean stops, wrongfooted. Where did this conversation go? “I’ll, I don’t know, he hasn’t—”

“You should call him. Ask him where he is. We can make a trip out of it.” Then for a moment, the everything’s-fine-and-dandy mask slips, and there’s just Sam, honest and broken. “I’m trying not to hurt so much, Dean. You gotta let me have my slip ups sometimes.”

“I hear ya,” Dean chokes out. “I— you don’t have to, we don’t have to go on a road trip. I’ll leave you be, if that’s what you want.”

“Who brought it up? Weren’t you listening?” Sam frowns down at Dean, the skin around his fingernails red and peeling after scrubbing at blackened grout for half an hour. “Lemme know if Cas wants a hand.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “sure.”

He sits there for a moment after Sam leaves, heart pounding for no good reason at all. Sam would never hurt him— not like Dean has, Dean with a hammer and black eyes chasing after his little brother, Dean with his fucked up dependency and a complicit Gadreel at his side, Dean and his fear, Dean and his rage.

First, Dean cleans up. He squeezes out the sponge and rinses it in the sink, and dumps his dirty bleach water down the shower drain. Then he goes to his room and calls Cas.

“Dean,” Cas says warmly, and Dean settles unaccountably just hearing it. 

He falls back onto his bed, willing to at least claim some comfort from his memory foam mattress. “Hey, Cas.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” Dean sighs. Stupid. Everything’s clearly not okay, if Dean’s calling less than a day after Cas left. He doesn’t have to lie. “I mean, mostly, yeah. I dunno. I fucked up with Sam.”

“Tell me about it.”

So Dean does, runs through the whole story from the moment Sam started acting wonky and not eating, and he’s almost tired by the time he finishes.

And Cas, well-intentioned, nonhuman Cas, says, “But surely Sam knows how to feed himself. It can’t be your responsibility to make sure he eats.”

Dean blows a breath out. “I— Cas—” He wants to say _Did you not hear everything I just said?_ but it feels too cruel. He tries, “It’s been my responsibility since he was born, Cas. You don’t give that up.”

“I see.” Cas is silent for a moment and Dean can practically hear his gears whizzing. “You feel responsible because you’ve been his primary caretaker for so long. And Sam is too sick to take care of himself.”

“Yes! Yeah, yes.” Dean’s stomach clenches. “But, also, Sam can make his own decisions. Is what he said.”

“So… Sam said there’s no need for you to be concerned. And…” Dean can hear Cas’s frown. “That makes you more concerned?”

Hearing it like that, it really does make Dean sound like a douchebag. “I— sort of, I guess, I mean.” He rubs the back of his hand against his forehead in an attempt to make this make sense. “He told me, he said, all he has left is his no. And I gotta give him that, Cas, I gotta let him say no even if that means he don’t want my help, but it’s— he can’t, Cas, he won’t eat, he won’t leave his room, he doesn’t wake up until noon most days. I dunno what to do.”

“He wanted to come see me, though. Hm. It seems like you should do that, then.”

Trust Cas to distill it into _should_ and _shouldn’t_ , into tasks that can be checked off a list. Dean isn’t sure whether he should be grateful or not, but then again, his way ended up with Sam puking up breakfast in a toilet. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“A rare occasion,” Cas says wryly, and Dean huffs out a laugh. They’ve both been catastrophically wrong too many times to be sensitive about it now, during the daytime, when there’s a bigger problem on the horizon. “Also, I’m in Overland Park.”

“Over— Overland Park, Kansas?” That’s a four hour drive away. Hardly any time at all, by Winchester standards. “Well, if you want us there, we’ll be there soon.”

“I always want you here.”

It’s too honest, too sudden, like Cas always is when it comes to this shit. Dean swallows his shock. “Uh, yeah, geez, Cas.” He makes himself say some sappy crap too, because he’s not gonna be outdone by a goddamn angel. “Same here.” Nailed it. “See you soon.”

“Bye, Dean,” Cas says goodnaturedly, and Dean hangs up out of pure self preservation. Jesus Christ, he doesn’t have time for this.

He finds Sam and gathers up some food — is sure to put some cash in his wallet where Sam can see, too, just so Sam can’t rationalize them out of buying food on the road — to take with them. Sam clearly notices, but doesn’t say a word; for now, at least, Dean’s taking that as a yes.

They load up the Impala, and Dean settles just a little from the smell of her, unchanged for as long as he can remember. Feels like centuries sometimes. God, he’s old.

As they pull out onto the 181, Dean reaches to put on his old Led Zeppelin II tape, when his sluggish brain manages to connect some dots. Sam, puking up food; Sam, flinching back because Dean forgot about his whole thing with making his own decisions; Sam, suggesting this road trip. “Uh,” he says, rusty since it’s the first thing he’s said to Sam other than the barely verbal cues to check the weapons trunk and the cooler, “you… you wanna pick the music?”

Sam blinks at him, clearly startled, and Dean thinks shit, shit, fucked it up again, loser. Then he asks, wide-eyed and earnest, “Dean, did you forget your own rule?”

“I didn’t—” Sam’s mouth twitches, just a little, and Dean blows out a breath of forced annoyance, to mask his own relief at the return of their normal bickering. “I’m doin’ you a favor, Sammy, jeez, get with the program.”

“Yeah, okay, Dean, got it.” Sam hands him the Zep II tape anyway, and Dean can’t help but feel warmed that Sam knew what he was going for even in spite of how fucked everything else is.

As they’re turning left onto Highway 24, Sam says, “You mind if we go through Lawrence?”

Dean blinks. He doesn’t do anything so dramatic as slam on the brakes or pull over to the shoulder, but he feels a little like he should’ve, just to give Sam an idea of how out of left field his request is. “What the hell? Why?”

“I dunno, just—” Sam looks out the window as they drive through Cawker City, over the bridge at Waconda Lake. “I just, I feel like we should. Feels like the right thing, right now.”

Dean reaches instinctively for the tape just as it ejects automatically, flipping it and sinking it back into the tape deck without even looking. “I dunno what you mean, but sure,” he says, to fill the void between the two sides. 

“I mean… we’re, like…” and Sam trails off, tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh.

Dean grits his teeth. They have another two, maybe three hours ‘till they hit Lawrence, and then another hour to get to Cas. “Like what, Sam?”

“I, I feel like, like we should go back, you know, back to where it all started. It feels like a full circle kinda moment right now, I guess. I dunno, Dean, I’m— you know I’m a mess, we don’t—” Sam swallows, and stops himself from finishing the sentence, but Dean can guess. I’m a mess, we don’t have to go to Lawrence. I’m a mess, don’t listen to what I’m saying. I’m a mess, make my decisions for me. Dean can’t imagine his own voice betraying him like that.

“I hear you,” Dean says, because he has nothing else to say. Sam nods, and doesn’t look at Dean, not once. Dean drives.

 

vii. planting

Lawrence is unforgiving. Real small towns, Dean thinks, at least have a sort of self-awareness. They know they’re small, and they’re not pretending at anything else. Lawrence is one of those places that calls itself a city, a real hot shot destination, but even Dean, a midwestern plains boy through and through, can see the cracks. Feels almost dangerous, the potential, the getting too big for its britches, the development. 

Maybe, though, maybe that’s just Dean remembering what this place was. It’s big now, but when he was a kid, real little, Lawrence had that small town vibe to it. He knows what this place was, and what became of it. The earth here is salted and burned, even if people live and grow here. It’s all surface level, easy transience; there’s no deep roots left in Lawrence. No one who knew what it used to be could live here now. He thinks he’d be hard pressed to find someone who lived in Lawrence in 1983 who stayed much longer after that.

Sam doesn’t look like he’s having these kinds of revelations. Sam isn’t looking over his shoulder for the feeling that crept after Dean last time he was here. Sam just says, “I’m gonna hit the head,” and walks into the truck stop bathroom like he owns the place.

Dean waits at the car, and when Sam comes back, Dean asks him, “What do you wanna find here?”

It’s a kinda messed up question. What is here for them, except for their parents’ graves? _Lysol wipes_ , Dean thinks.

“I wanted to see what it’s like.” Sam looks around; with the new convenience stores, hotels, it’s hard to see any of the land they grew up on. “I thought—” he cuts himself off abruptly. “‘S dumb. Let’s just go.”

“Wait.” Dean puts his hand on Sam’s forearm, forestalling any objections. “Wait a sec. Finish what you were saying.”

Dean knows what he’d say. He wants to know what it’s like to really be on land that’s had its soul scraped out of it, been desecrated so many times it’s not even cursed, just barren. He wants to find something new here, that’s gotta be what he keeps coming back for, but he’s certain that no matter what he finds, it’ll— “—most likely be dead already.”

“What?”

Sam looks at him. “If you weren’t even listening—”

“No, Sam, Jesus, could you just—”

“I _said_ ,” Sam says pointedly, “that I’m trying — I dunno, Dean, I’m trying to see what’s left here. I feel—” He pulls his arm back from Dean, and leans against the car, eyes out into the sky. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve been— well, you know, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean replies, hoarse.

“It’s happened so many times, sometimes I wonder— I wonder what’s left of, of me, you know? How do I make something new out of this, this, this _body_ , Dean, this body’s just been— how do I make it _mine_ again?” Sam won’t look at Dean. He won’t even look at the ground he came to see; just the sky, bright and blue and clear. Sam swallows. “I thought I was doing it. I thought I was starting to figure it out, and then, and then Lucifer came back, and I just—”

“Uh huh,” Dean says quietly, because he knows. He saw what happened when Lucifer came back.

“So I thought— I don’t know any people who’ve, who’ve been through— but, but maybe, I thought, maybe this place, maybe this place could tell me how. Maybe this place could show me how to become new.”

They breathe in silence together for a second, held together by this admission. This need.

“So,” Dean offers, when the silence has gone on long enough, “you wanna, like, drive around some or somethin’?”

“Nah.” Sam laughs, sharp and hard, like he always seems to laugh these days. “Nah, I figure— I figure, if there’s anything here, I couldn’t understand it. I’m not a fuckin’ rock, I’m a person. And if there’s anyone left here who could tell me what they think about it, they’re probably dead already.”

“Oh.” Somehow Dean feels disappointed, even if he also thought it was kinda stupid to try to learn from a place. What does a hill have to tell you about being a person?

Sam clenches his fist, once, and releases it, and with it a long and deep breath. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t even have asked to stop here, we coulda met up with Cas by now.”

He’s not committed to it, though, and Dean realizes what he should’ve realized earlier, from the moment Sam asked to come to Lawrence: “You just wanted to come to Lawrence. You didn’t even wanna see Cas.”

He doesn’t mean it accusingly, doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal because Sam and Cas are friends anyway, but Sam flinches. “I— no, it’s not like that—”

“Chill, I don’t care, dude.” Dean leans back against the car. “I’m sorry you couldn’t find what you needed here. Especially ‘cause that was the whole damn reason we came on this trip.”

“It’s not the _whole_ reason,” Sam mutters, but unconvincingly.

Then, Dean says, “Well, we made it this far. You still wanna go to Overland Park?”

“Yeah, of course.”

So they load themselves back up, and Dean backs out of the parking lot and heads back onto the road. As they’re navigating the rabbit warren of highway turn offs and neighbourhood enclaves, Dean starts to get that itch at the back of his neck again. He doesn’t react, because he’s not about to make himself look like a damn fool in front of Sam, but he drives a little faster, and looks in his rearview a little more often.

Sam notices, of course, because Sam’s not an idiot. “You feel it too?” Sam asks, and Dean breathes out a sigh of relief.

“Jesus,” he says, “I thought— thought I was imagining it last time.”

Sam frowns. “You felt this and you didn’t tell me?”

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey Sam, I had this weird feeling when I went back to our birthplace and bought some groceries, but it was fine once I left and nothing actually happened.’ Not our kind of thing, I don’t think.”

“Huh.” Sam doesn’t argue, though, so he clearly agrees. With the validation of a second person, as much as he sometimes feels like his brother’s a part of him, Dean takes turns too quickly and openly relaxes once they get back on the highway.

After a few minutes, Sam says, “Maybe… maybe that was Lawrence.”

“Like… like the place?” Now Dean’s imagining some old guy named Lawrence chasing after their car, huffing and puffing just to make Dean more paranoid. It’s not a great mental image, to be honest.

Sam rolls his eyes, clearly imagining the same thing Dean is, or something close enough. “Yeah, like the place.” _Dumbass_ , he leaves unsaid, but Dean hears it loud and clear. More seriously, Sam adds, “Maybe it’s like… like the city was telling us to get out. Winchesters have done enough damage. Your kind not welcome here. Etcetera etcetera.”

“You telling me our hometown has a vendetta against us?”

“ _Your_ hometown,” Sam corrects.

He’s mild enough, but Dean still reels. “Wow.” After a second, Dean puts his hand out, and Sam hands him Run With The Pack. “Huh. Nice choice.” As Bad Company rolls through the speakers, Dean thinks more about what Sam said. “You think we can get back in Lawrence’s good books?”

“I dunno.” Then Sam frowns, like that’s not really what he meant to say. He tries: “Maybe it’s not for us to fix.”

“I… huh.” Somehow, it’s not the worst thing Dean can imagine, being semi-banned from a place that for a long, long time was the only thing he could have ever considered home. He feels like the city wouldn’t hold it against him if there was an emergency, which isn’t a sentence he ever thought he’d think. “I… I’m weirdly okay with that.”

“Me too,” Sam says, leaning back in the passenger seat.

They’re coming up on the motel where Cas is staying, so Dean lets it lie. He turns into the parking lot, and can’t help the smile when he sees the pickup Cas borrowed from their garage.

It’s not an eventful meeting; Cas has no leads, Sam tries to fake a smile when Lucifer’s name comes up, and Dean tries not to punch anything. Overall, it’s kind of fun, and well worth it just to see Sam out of the bunker. Dean’s feeling pretty good, and even thinks that maybe nothing bad would happen if they drove back through Lawrence anyway, despite the warnings.

On the way back, though, they go up through Kansas City anyway. Just to be safe.


End file.
